Advertisement

Introduction: In the Midst of Global Power Shifts

  • Hendrik W. Ohnesorge
Chapter
First Online:
  • 435 Downloads
Part of the Global Power Shift book series (GLOBAL)

Abstract

The chapter identifies the existence of two different yet interconnected global power shifts as crucially shaping the nature of international relations today. First, the phenomenon of power transitions, that is, the shifting power positions of nation-states or regions, which has always been a feature in the international affairs, is identified as having gained new momentum in recent years, especially due to the much-debated rise of China. Second, a variety of different developments has increasingly led to ever-greater power diffusion, resulting in an unprecedented dispersion of power among different actors and actor types on the international stage.

Against the backdrop of these developments, the author identifies the phenomenon of soft power as becoming increasingly important in our global information age. Proceeding from a review of existing literature on the concept of (soft) power, he identifies pivotal research gaps in this regard, including the need for a more substantiated and sophisticated understanding of the concept itself as well as a demand for methodologically sound approaches to the empirical study of the workings of soft power in international relations today.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Anholt, Simon. “Soft Power.” Internationale Politik (January/February 2014), pp. 48–53.Google Scholar
  2. Arquilla, John and David Ronfeldt. The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy. Santa Monica, Cal.: RAND Corporation, 1999.Google Scholar
  3. Arquilla, John and David Ronfeldt. “Noopolitik: A New Paradigm for Public Diplomacy.” In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, edited by Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor, pp. 352–365. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2009.Google Scholar
  4. Auer, Claudia, Alice Srugies, and Martin Löffelholz. “Schlüsselbegriffe der internationalen Diskussion: Public Diplomacy und Soft Power.” In Kultur und Außenpolitik: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Praxis, edited by Kurt-Jürgen Maaß, pp. 39–54. Baden Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Barber, Benjamin R. “McWorld vs. Jihad.” The Atlantic Monthly (March 1992). Online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1992/03/jihad-vs-mcworld/303882/ (accessed September 4, 2017).
  6. Baumann, Peter and Gisela Cramer. “Power, Soft or Deep? An Attempt at Constructive Criticism.” Las Torres de Lucca: International Journal of Political Philosophy, No. 10 (January-June 2017), pp. 177–214.Google Scholar
  7. Blair, Tony. “Address by the Right Honorable Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Washington, D.C., July 13, 2003. In Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 108th Congress, First Session, Vol. 149 – Part 14, July 17, 2003 to July 25 2003, pp. 18596–18598. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2003.Google Scholar
  8. Blanchard Jean-Marc F. and Fujia Lu. “Thinking Hard about Soft Power: A Review and Critique of the Literature on China and Soft Power.” Asian Perspective Vol. 36, No. 4 (2012), pp. 565–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Brooks, Stephen G. and William C. Wohlforth. America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
  10. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. Richelieu; Or, The Conspiracy: A Play, in Five Acts. London: Saunders and Otley, 1839.Google Scholar
  11. Chang, Gordon H. Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  12. Chitty, Naren, Li Ji, Gary D. Rawnsley, and Craig Hayden, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Soft Power. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.Google Scholar
  13. Cohen, Eliot A. “Is Trump Ending the American Era?.” The Atlantic (October 2017), pp. 69–73.Google Scholar
  14. Commuri, Gitika. “‘Are You Pondering What I am Pondering?’ Understanding the Conditions Under Which States Gain and Loose Soft Power.” In Power in the 21st Century: International Security and International Political Economy in a Changing World, edited by Enrico Fels, Jan-Frederik Kremer, and Katharina Kronenberg, pp. 43–57. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Cronin, Vincent. The Florentine Renaissance. London: Pimlico, 1992.Google Scholar
  16. Davies, Norman. Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2011.Google Scholar
  17. Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. “Kunst und Wissenschaft.” In Versuche/Kants Hoffnung: Essays und Reden, pp. 72–97. Zürich: Diogenes, 1998.Google Scholar
  18. Falk, Richard. Power Shift: On the New Global Order. London: Zed Books, 2016.Google Scholar
  19. Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire. New York, N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2004.Google Scholar
  20. Fraser, Matthew. Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.Google Scholar
  21. Gallarotti, Giulio M. Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism, and Constructivism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
  22. Gallarotti, Giulio M. “Smart Power: Definitions, Importance, and Effectiveness.” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (2015), pp. 245-281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. George, Alexander L. and Andrew Bennett. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.Google Scholar
  24. Geschwend, Thomas and Frank Schimmelfennig. “Introduction: Designing Research in Political Science – A Dialogue between Theory and Data.” In Research Design in Political Science: How to Practice What They Preach, edited by Thomas Geschwend and Frank Schimmelfennig, pp. 1–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar
  25. Gilboa, Eytan. “Searching for a Theory of Public Diplomacy.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 616, Public Diplomacy in a Changing World (March 2008), pp. 55–77.Google Scholar
  26. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust: A Dramatic Poem. Translated into English Verse by Theodore Martin. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1871.Google Scholar
  27. Goldsmith, Benjamin E. and Yusaku Horiuchi. “In Search of Soft Power: Does Foreign Public Opinion Matter for US Foreign Policy?.” World Politics, Vol. 64, No. 3 (July 2012), pp. 555–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Graves, Robert. I, Claudius. London: Collector’s Library, 2013.Google Scholar
  29. Gu, Xuewu. “Ist Globalität gestaltbar?.” In Bonner Enzyklopädie der Globalität, edited by Ludger Kühnhardt and Tilman Mayer, pp. 1527–1541. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Hall, Edith. “Adventures in Ancient Greek and Roman Libraries.” In The Meaning of the Library: A Cultural History, edited by Alice Crawford, pp. 1–30. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  31. Hall, Todd. “An Unclear Attraction: A Critical Examination of Soft Power as an Analytical Category.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2010), pp. 189–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Han, Byung-Chul. Was ist Macht?. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005.Google Scholar
  33. Hancké, Bob. “The Challenge of Research Design.” In Theory and Methods in Political Science, edited by David Marsh and Gerry Stoker, pp. 232–248. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Hayden, Craig. “Scope, Mechanism, and Outcome: Arguing Soft Power in the Context of Public Diplomacy.” Journal of International Relations and Development, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2017), pp. 331–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History. London: Pan Books, 2006.Google Scholar
  36. Herodotus. The History. Translated from the Ancient Greece by George Rawlinson, Volume I. New York, N.Y.: The Tandy-Thomas Company, 1909 (Hdt.).Google Scholar
  37. Hodge, James F., Jr. “A Global Power Shift in the Making.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 4 (July/August 2004), pp. 2–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Ifantis, Kostas. “Soft Power: Overcoming the Limits of a Concept.” In Routledge Handbook of Diplomacy and Statecraft, edited by B. J. C. McKercher, pp. 441–452. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
  39. Keohane, Robert O. and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Power and Independence: World Politics in Transition. Boston, Mass.: Little Brown and Company, 1977.Google Scholar
  40. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
  41. Kipling, Rudyard. “Recessional.” The Times, July 17, 1897, p. 13.Google Scholar
  42. Kissinger, Henry. On China. London: Allen Lane, 2011.Google Scholar
  43. Kissinger, Henry. World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History. London: Allen Lane, 2014.Google Scholar
  44. Lange, Matthew. Comparative-Historical Methods. Los Angeles, Cal.: SAGE Publications, 2013.Google Scholar
  45. Layne, Christopher. “The Unbearable Lightness of Soft Power.” In Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, pp. 51–82. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
  46. Lee, Geun. “A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy.” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 21, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 205–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  47. Lehnert, Matthias, Bernhard Miller, and Arndt Wonka. “Increasing the Relevance of Research Questions: Considerations on Theoretical and Social Relevance in Social Science.” In Research Design in Political Science: How to Practice What They Preach, edited by Thomas Geschwend and Frank Schimmelfennig, pp. 21–38. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.Google Scholar
  48. Mahoney, James and Dietrich Rueschemeyer. “Comparative Historical Analysis: Achievements and Agendas.” In Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, edited by James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, pp. 3–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
  49. Mahoney, James and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds. Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
  50. Mahoney, James and Kathleen Thelen, eds. Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  51. Mandelbaum, Michael. Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
  52. Mattern, Janice Bially. “Why ‘Soft Power’ Isn’t So Soft: Representational Force and the Sociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 33, No. 3 (2005), pp. 583–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  53. Melissen, Jan. “The New Public Diplomacy: Between Theory and Practice.” In The New Public Diplomacy: Soft Power in International Relations, edited by Jan Melissen, pp. 3–27. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Translated, with an Introduction by Marianne Cowan. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1962.Google Scholar
  55. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books, 1990.Google Scholar
  56. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “The Changing Nature of World Power.” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 105, No. 2 (Summer 1990), pp. 177–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  57. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, No. 80 (Autumn 1990), pp. 153–171.Google Scholar
  58. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York, N.Y.: PublicAffairs, 2004.Google Scholar
  59. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “The Future of Soft Power in US Foreign Policy.” In Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, pp. 4–11. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
  60. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “Responding to My Critics and Concluding Thoughts.” In Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, pp. 215–227. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
  61. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. The Future of Power. New York, N.Y.: PublicAffairs, 2011.Google Scholar
  62. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. “The War on Soft Power.” Foreign Policy, April 12, 2011. Online at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/12/the-war-on-soft-power/ (accessed September 4, 2017).Google Scholar
  63. O’Neill, Jim. “Building Better Global Economic BRICs.” Global Economics Paper No: 66, Goldman Sachs, November 30, 2001. Online at: http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/archive-pdfs/build-better-brics.pdf (accessed September 4, 2017).
  64. Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso). Metamorphosen: Metamorphoseon Libri. Translated and Edited by Erich Rösch, with an Introduction by Niklas Holzberg. München: Artemis & Winkler 1992 (Ov. Met.).Google Scholar
  65. Parmar, Inderjeet and Michael Cox, eds. Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
  66. Patalakh, Artem. “Assessment of Soft Power Strategies: Towards an Aggregative Analytical Model for Country-Focused Case Study Research.” Croatian International Relations Review, Vol. 22, No. 76 (2016), pp. 85–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  67. Roselle, Laura, Alister Miskimmon, and Ben O’Loughlin. “Strategic Narrative: A New Means to Understand Soft Power.” Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2014), pp. 70–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  68. Solomon, Ty. “The Affective Underpinnings of Soft Power.” European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 20, No. 3 (2014), pp. 720–741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  69. Su Changhe. “Soft Power.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, edited by Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, and Ramesh Thakur, pp. 544–558. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
  70. Thelen, Kathleen and James Mahoney. “Comparative-Historical Analysis in Contemporary Political Science.” In Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis, edited by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, pp. 3–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
  71. Weidenfeld, Werner. America and Europe: Is the Break Inevitable?. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, 1996.Google Scholar
  72. Wyne, Ali S. “Public Opinion and Power.” In Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, edited by Nancy Snow and Philip M. Taylor, pp. 39–49. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2009.Google Scholar
  73. Yasushi, Watanabe and David L. McConnell, eds. Soft Power Superpowers: Cultural and National Assets of Japan and the United States (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2008).Google Scholar
  74. Zaharna, R. S. The Cultural Awakening in Public Diplomacy, CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy, Paper 4, 2012. Los Angeles, Cal.: Figueroa Press, 2012.Google Scholar
  75. Zahran, Geraldo and Leonardo Ramos. “From Hegemony to Soft Power: Implications of a Conceptual Change.” In Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, pp. 12–31. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Google Scholar
  76. Zakaria, Fareed. “The Future of American Power: How America Can Survive the Rise of the Rest.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 3 (May/June 2008), pp. 18–43.Google Scholar
  77. Zakaria, Fareed. The Post-American World: And the Rise of the Rest. London: Penguin Books, 2009.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  • Hendrik W. Ohnesorge
    • 1
  1. 1.Center for Global StudiesUniversity of BonnBonnGermany

Personalised recommendations

Cite chapter

Buy options